


The High Place Phenomenon

by Dorian



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Another Scene in the Diner, Betty and Jughead Talk, F/M, Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-05
Updated: 2017-12-05
Packaged: 2019-02-10 18:40:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12917889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dorian/pseuds/Dorian
Summary: Kevin falls into step next to her, leaning in close. In a rush he says, “Okay, so don’t shoot the messenger, but there’s a rumor Jughead and Toni hooked up, orarehooking up, and I thought you should know.”





	The High Place Phenomenon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [village_skeptic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/village_skeptic/gifts).



> I had the most amazing group of wonderful betas—soyforramen, mercuryfish, starlightafterastorm, bewarethesmirk, theatreofexpression and tallulalusa—who helped me tremendously with this difficult fic! <3

It’s a Wednesday—Betty will never forget that unimportant detail—just after the final bell releases the pent-up mass of students. At the far end of the hall, a group of boys in letterman jackets start tossing tennis balls against the lockers with rattling bangs.

A stray tennis ball whips out into the crowd of students flowing past. Someone yells, _God, stop it already!_ followed by hoots of laughter.

Kevin falls into step next to her, leaning in close. In a rush he says, “Okay, so don’t shoot the messenger, but there’s a rumor Jughead and Toni hooked up, or _are_ hooking up, and I thought you should know.”

Betty stops in the middle of the hallway, hearing another bang from a tennis ball and an angry cry and all the layered confusion of footfalls.

She thinks, _Jug would never_.

_He wouldn’t._

_That can’t be—_

“Wait.” She glances over at Kevin, because something doesn’t add up. “Where did you hear this? No one even knows who Toni is here.”

Kevin won’t quite meet her eyes when he says, “The rumor’s at Southside High.”

Someone jostles past Betty with a muttered, _Move, crazy girl._ Kevin says something she can’t make out. She grabs his elbow and pushes backwards through the press of bodies until they’re past the mostly empty east hallway and have the Blue and Gold’s office door closed behind them.

Betty drops her bag and leans against the edge of the desk. Her _boss desk_ as Jughead used to—

“How do you know about the rumors at Southside High?”

Kevin stares down at his highly polished shoes. “My sources are legion, Betty. Legion.”

Betty raises both of her eyebrows, crosses her arms and waits.

“Okay, fine.” His expression turns wary. “I may or may not be hooking up with a guy from Southside High, who told me.”

But this isn’t true—it _can’t_ be because that’s not who Jughead is. Betty won’t feed into a rumor by asking Kevin for specifics, so she digs out a smile and shifts the focus.

“Is he cute? Your mystery Southside source?”

Kevin blinks, thrown off, and leans against one of the old student desks. Some of the tension drops out of his shoulders.

“Betty, you know I’m a sucker for a pretty face.”

 _Yeah_ , she thinks, but remembers the lovely pink streaks in Toni’s long hair instead.

“And an ear for gossip,” Kevin adds, tapping his chin thoughtfully. “Dreamboat combination, really.”

 

 

 

 

On the walk home, Betty stares down at the rain-damp sidewalk and twists the handle of her open umbrella between her palms in arcs that send gathered raindrops flying. Her mind clicks through the options in time with each twist: ignore, verify, ask. Ignore, verify, ask. Ignore—

 _You trust Jughead_ , Betty reminds herself, walking up her driveway. She lets herself into the empty house and hangs up her coat in the hall closet.

She _has been_ trusting Jughead.

Betty tries not to let her mind catch on the way Toni had said, _You’re nothing like what I pictured,_ the Code Breaking Incident, seeing them together at Pop’s, the missed calls and—

She pauses in front of the mirror her mom put up in the front hall. _I’m being insecure_ , Betty thinks at her reflection, as her mind kicks off the ruthless process of point-by-point comparison that she’s helpless to stop. Toni is very pretty.

She trusts Jughead.

But Betty has been chasing stories for a while now. The horrible rush that’s flowing up from low in her gut—more intense than the best runner’s high and packing in all the relief of picking at a healing scab—isn’t insecurity. She’s stumbled onto something. She just doesn’t know what yet.

Everything around her is still and silent except for the occasional taps of the rain on the windows and the steady ticks of the grandfather clock as its pendulum heart swings back and forth.

She almost wishes Kevin hadn’t told her, because the loose thread you don’t notice is the easiest one not to pull.

_I’m just being insecure._

The prim, ordinary girl in the mirror keeps staring back. Her fingers twitch inward.

Betty flexes them straight again and heads up to her bedroom. Washed-out afternoon light sneaks in through the blinds, leaving faint bars along the floor.

She’s emptying her backpack, Bio and Pre-Calc and her notebook, when her eyes catch on two library books shoved off to the side of her desk. She’d needed them for a local history project she finished last week. She’s been meaning to return them, but not making the time—even though the walk is only about half an hour there and back.

Probably less, since she can get to Southside High in fifteen minutes and the library is a few blocks closer.

Betty’s hands still on her backpack as she stares at the unreturned books and thinks, _It’s just a rumor._

She finds a canvas tote for the books on account of the rain. She writes a note for her mom in the same bright pink ink she’s used since she was ten, to leave on the breakfast bar:

_Returning books to library. Will be home for dinner. B._

She puts back on her coat, grabs her umbrella and—

Betty stops outside on the front stoop with her hand closed tight around the doorknob. She draws in a lungful of damp air and holds her breath, feeling the tumbling speed of her heart.

With a final tug, she closes the door and hears the _snick_ of the lock catch behind her.

 

 

 

 

Betty heads to the center of town, by the cemetery with its green, mossy pathways and gray headstones that look almost black from the rain. She traces the familiar route, past Pop’s and on towards the railroad tracks.

She stops between the rails with her feet on the rough wooden crossties and stares down the line of the tracks that disappear into the green mass of Fox Forest. Wisps of mist curl around the treetops. A few drops of rain poke at the top of her umbrella like the nudge of a ghostly finger.

She imagines disappearing down the railroad tracks and seeing how far she gets before there’s a train. For a distorted moment, staring down the tracks feels like looking over the edge of a high cliff—like peering past the lip of the old quarry and leaning back against that irrational urge to step forward into nothing. Something about the feeling makes Betty picture the specific blue of Jughead’s eyes in the afternoon light as he sat across from her in Pop’s and spun out his fantasy of escape, of jumping on his bike with her and leaving Riverdale behind.

She’s only been on his bike once for the short ride from the hospital to Pop’s and back. She recalls so clearly how his voice switched between teasing and almost shy. How she’d strapped on his helmet and wrapped her arms tight around his waist as the numbing wind roared past. Under the wheels of the bike, the road had been a smooth dark blur that would flay their skins off at the first bad spill.

A mistake, one wrong mistake—

Betty leans back from the wild, irrational urge and crosses the tracks.

 

 

 

 

The library is just on the wrong side of town. The bright dividing line between North and South isn’t something she’d thought about much during summer nights at the drive-in or those Sunday mornings the Coopers appeared at the church right across the street from Southside High.

Betty drops the books into the return slot and listens as they clatter down the unseen inner chutes.

 

 

 

 

On the front steps leading up to Southside High, a half dozen boys linger in a staggered semi-circle, carrying on overlapping conversations and passing around a bag of Red Vines. Their ripped denim jackets are decorated all over with silver spikes. They fall silent and stare as she climbs the steps and pushes through the front doors.

She slips past the metal detectors next to the long tables and empty gray bins that are chained in place.

The layers of angry graffiti that cover the lockers and walls unnerve her each time she sees them. Halfway down the main hall she reads _smack my bitch up_ in huge, angular letters and underneath in a drippy, looping black script _she had it coming_. After that Betty lets her eyes skim around the edges of words.

 

 

 

 

Jughead would hate to think of himself as a creature of habit, but the Red and Black office has replaced Pop’s as his hangout when he’s not with the Serpents or at the trailer. Betty knocks on the door as she pushes it open and takes in the still-cluttered room with the dusty drop cloths, the half-closed blackout curtains and, side-by-side, the two coffee makers, silver and army green.

Jughead looks back over his shoulder at her knock.

“Betty?” He sounds surprised. She tries not to evaluate whether his tone implies she’s a good surprise or a bad surprise.

“Hi! I was just returning some library books.” Betty stops herself from shifting the empty canvas tote on her shoulder like a prop in a play. “I hoped to catch you here.”

She leans back against the messy table nearest the one over-sized window. Dust motes drift through the slanted column of sunlight. She considers asking what he's working on, if he’s uncovered any new leads, but Jughead is already closing his laptop. Since the Red and Black has switched to an all digital publication—something to do with the paper budget running out—she can read all his pieces online like everyone else whenever she wants.

Betty didn’t ask him to leave, but she watches him finish packing up. The clash of the red flannel tied around his waist with his leather jacket is an almost endearing combination as long as she doesn’t let herself think about the implications.

Jughead stops in front of her, staring down. His eyebrows draw together a little.

“Everything okay?”

Betty shoves down the sharp-edged laughter that unfolds inside her chest and leans back, bracing her hands on the table. “When are things ever okay?”

Jughead scoffs but the sound is gentler than she expects. He touches her arm, coming a half-step closer. “Betty Cooper. That sounded cynical. You must be spending too much time with the wrong sort of people.”

Betty tips her chin up and replies without much thought because the way Jughead is staring at her mouth is all she can focus on.

He tilts his head to the side with a motion that’s so deliberate and slow her heart speeds up. Her eyes flutter closed as he cups the back of her neck with a big warm hand and leans in to kiss her.

Betty slides her fingers under the edge of his heavy jacket, feeling the soft lining against her knuckles, and fits her palms to the warm curves of his sides. She opens her mouth at the sweep of his tongue, screams at her brain to shut up so she can get lost in his mouth and in his hand on her neck and the hot flicker of sparks that race all over her skin.

His other hand slides from her shoulder down her back to toy with the edge of her shirt. His thumb slips under to graze against her bare skin and her imagination sends that same touch across the tops of her breasts, down her stomach, trailing up the inside of her thighs....

His lean, warm body feels amazing under her palms as her hands move over the defined ridges of his ribs to his chest and up to his neck. The kiss feeds the banked down heat in her stomach that makes her want to press up against him, to tug him close and get her legs around his waist to pull him in—

The stuttering rev of a motorcycle engine breaks the spell and slams her back into herself. Betty pulls away from the kiss and presses her forehead against his shoulder. The worn leather feels cool against her skin and smells faintly of sweat and smoke.

All the hazy warmth leeches away from her and she wishes she could have trapped the feeling in a jar like a caught lightning bug.

Betty draws in a slow, steadying breath and asks, “Walk me home?”

 

 

 

 

They have to stop by the trailer so he can swap his jacket for one of his old fleece-lined coats, since they’ve learned the hard way that anyone with a serpent on their back north of the tracks draws glares or worse.

Jughead can slip between sides only when he looks like the person he used to be. Betty reaches for his hand as he clatters down the metal stairs of the trailer back to where she is waiting.

She can count the number of blocks from Sunnyside trailer park to her house on both hands.

Just nine and a half blocks.

 

 

 

 

Betty waits until they’re turning onto Elm Street before she says, “Kevin still hasn’t let go of Fox Forest, not completely—”

Jughead looks puzzled and she realizes she never told him much about fighting and making up with Kevin. Or fighting and making up with him _again_ when Veronica got Kevin in their brief, bitter estrangement.

They’re already halfway down the block. _Focus._

“But he must be getting over it because he mentioned this new guy. A steady hookup. Who goes to Southside High.”

Jughead tilts his head, listening in his calm, focused way that so often gives her a place to pour her racing thoughts.

“I think they’re bonding over a shared love of gossip. Kevin said something else though. A rumor.”

She lets go of Jughead’s hand as they reach the bottom of the steps that lead up to the front door. Her mom’s car is in the driveway and the lights are on in the downstairs windows.

Betty turns to face Jughead, shoving her hands in the pockets of her coat and ducking her head before making herself glance up.

 _Look offended,_ she thinks. _Look confused._

“He mentioned a rumor that you and Toni are hooking up.”

Jughead’s eyes go wide and he immediately lifts a hand towards her, something pleading in the gesture, and his face—

_Fuck._

She turns and takes the stairs as fast as she can. She feels Jughead touch her arm and then her back and on some level she’s aware he’s saying her name, asking her to wait.

She gets the door open and hears her mom calling, _Is that you, Betty?_ which stops Jughead in his tracks and lets Betty get the door closed between them. Not slammed. Just closed with a quick, ordinary-looking push.

She says something back to her mom, feels her phone start to vibrate in her pocket and makes it up to her bedroom, closes the door and the blinds and the curtains and—

She muffles the sound as best as she can by pressing her face into a pillow. She feels like someone has stripped all the skin off her stomach and chest, pulled off layers of muscle and pushed apart her ribs and her heart, her heart—

At some point she hears knocking on the window, louder than the occasional tap of the rain.

Eventually the knocking stops.

 

 

 

 

“I think I’m coming down with a cold,” she tells her mom at dinner, pushing her whole wheat pasta and steamed vegetables around on her plate.

“Sorry to hear that, kiddo,” her dad says.

Her mom narrows her eyes and picks up her wine glass. “Don’t take Sudafed PM. It makes you too drowsy in the morning. Take regular Advil Cold and Sinus and an Ambien.”

Betty pushes her food around and says, “Okay, Mom.”

 

 

 

 

Later her mom brings her five pills in a tiny white cup and Betty doesn’t care enough to work out what they are from the shapes and codes and colors.

Betty tips all the pills into her mouth, washes them down with a sip of water, and says, “Thanks. Night.”

Her mom pauses in the doorway on the way out without turning around. “Feel better, sweetie. Don’t miss any school.”

 

 

 

 

Betty wakes up groggy the next morning anyway. Her head hurts and her eyes hurt and her—

A lot of things hurt. She sees texts and missed call notifications on her unlock screen and thinks, _Figure out what happened._

She has 27 unread texts and all but four of them are from Jughead. She scrolls back to Yesterday 4:42 PM and works forward.

_It’s not what you think._

_She needed a place to crash for the night._

_She kissed me._

By the time Betty gets to, _We didn’t have sex_ and _One time thing_ , she’s crying too hard again to read any more. But she gets ahold of herself, blows her nose and forces herself through the rest because she’s not doing this twice.

Betty wants to delete all these texts.

She doesn’t. Instead she takes screengrabs of them on habit like she’s going to print them out and stick them up on some new murderboard.

Betty showers and blow dries her hair and deals with her palms and opens her closet up to the familiar wash of delicate pinks and blues and so many white collared shirts.

Betty ignores the text from Archie asking to walk her to school and then realizes that will just make him wait for her at the end of the block so she texts back _running late_ and _ttyl._

Betty Cooper makes sure she gets to her first class five minutes late with a very apologetic smile and a short, plausible, convincing explanation that Mr. Joseph waves off before she can even get past the first _I’m so sorry_.

Veronica raises her eyebrows at Betty from across the room. Betty texts her _Riding the crimson wave_ because she’ll be amused by the reference and, for now, not ask more questions.

Moments later, her phone vibrates.

_Alicia Silverstone may have peaked at 18, but we’ll always have Clueless._

 

 

 

 

She ignores Jughead and avoids him.

She figured out who the Sugarman was, who killed Jason Blossom. She can dodge one boy for a couple of days even in a town the size of Riverdale.

 

 

 

 

Friday evening, when her room starts closing in on her like angry hands tightening around her throat, she wanders over to the Andrews’ and sits in one of the rocking chairs on their front porch. Twilight settles across the blue-purple sky.

Eventually Mr. Andrews steps out to get the rolled-up morning paper from the doormat and blinks at her.

“Oh hey, Betty. Archie isn't home.”

Betty shakes her head. Somehow because it’s Mr. Andrews staring at her with those kind, weary eyes she admits, “I know.”

Mr. Andrews disappears into the house and comes back with two root beers in tapered brown bottles. He sits with her in the second rocking chair as the last light fades, staring out into his own thoughts while nursing his root beer and doesn't ask any questions.

Pale scattered stars fade into the deepening sky. The moon is just a pared down fragment.

“I've got ice cream, Betty,” he says at last. “Come inside.”

Betty wipes under her eyes and nods and eats almost half a pint of plain chocolate ice cream with Mr. Andrews. She leans on the opposite side of the kitchen island and listens to him talk about old times, embarrassing Archie stories she already knows and a brief one about him and FP during the last days of high school that she's never heard, not in all the years she's been listening to Mr. Andrews’ stories.

It’s a funny story. Mr. Andrews hits all the pauses and beats just right. But his eyes go tired and sad halfway through.

She thanks Mr. Andrews for the ice cream and says she’d better head back home.

“Anytime, Betty.” He nods towards the sink for her spoon.

She leaves him there staring down at the almost empty container, lost again in his own thoughts.

 

 

 

 

That night, sitting up in her bed and staring at her phone, Betty lets her mind click through her options: ignore, forgive or br—

Her stomach lurches. She stares over at her window seat. All those hours of crying for a separation she knew she could walk back once everyone was safe.

—or break up.

She texts him, _Meet me at Pop’s?_

Less than a minute later Jughead texts back, _Y._ Then, _Yes. When?_

Betty keeps her fingers uncurled and knocks the back of her head against her headboard, hard.

_Can you be there in 20?_

_I’ll be there._

The typing indicator flashes and flashes and stops.

She's halfway to Pop’s before her phone dings again: _Thanks._

 

 

 

 

Betty steps inside Pop’s. She sees the ghosts of younger versions of herself scattered throughout the diner—meeting friends for the first time, treats with her dad back when she thought he was perfect, all those hours with Archie in their favorite booth over years and years and years, and that time she fell in love with a boy who gently wrapped his hands around her ugly, aching palms like he wished, somehow, to keep her from her confusing pain.

Pop Tate looks up from behind the register and smiles at her.

“Your fella’s here.”

Betty nods and gives smiling back her best shot.

She slides into the opposite side of the booth where, as it happens, she first met Veronica. Jughead looks tired, which maybe should leave her satisfied but only drags at the lump of dread in her stomach.

He says, “Hey,” and his voice makes the word into a question.

Betty can’t think of a single thing to say back. She opens her mouth and what comes out is, “You made out with her.”

“We didn’t have—”

Betty closes her eyes and Jughead stops.

Any investigation is a dissection. Flay open the messy bulk of events and pull out the few essential facts.

“She spent the night with you. You see her every day. I understand you were hurt. I understand I broke up with you. You didn’t know why then. You know why now.”

These are the essential facts.

_So, Cooper, what’s the story?_

She stares across the empty table at Jughead, who resembles the boy she’s known her whole life in his beanie and fleece-lined jean jacket.

“Betty, I’m sorry—”

“Why did I find out like that, Jug? Why didn’t you tell me?” Betty swipes at the damp line that’s sliding down the side of her face and feels a rush of ragged laughter snag in her lungs, because despite _everything_. “I want to hold your hand. I want you to make this—”

Jughead’s smart enough not to take that as a request or an invitation.

He looks like he did back in middle school after the bullying had started to get bad but before he’d figure out how to preemptively shut everyone out. That helpless, resigned hurt.

Betty closes her eyes, pushing more tears down her face.

She feels pared down the middle, like there are two unconnected glass chambers inside her. Because this should change how she feels. How can this not change how she—

Why doesn’t anything make her _stop_ —

“I still love you,” she hears herself say as she reopens all the cuts in her palms.

She can’t be here in this bright warm place that used to feel so safe. Not another second. Betty gets up and walks right out of Pop’s. Behind her, the bell chimes softly.

She’s pretty sure it’s a good thing Jughead doesn’t follow her.

But part of her wishes that he had. Even though no good would have come of it.

 

 

 

 

That night Betty lies awake in bed, staring up at the ceiling. She asks herself, over and over again, _For these facts, what’s the story? What’s the angle where all this makes sense?_

_What is the story?_

Around two in the morning, Betty changes the question.

For these facts, what story does she _want_?

 

 

 

 

Saturday morning, Betty eats an egg white omelette and listens to her mom complain about Archie, a surprise throwback rant about staying away from bad people who’ll keep on hurting her.

Maybe Archie coming up to the door to ask her to walk with him to school Friday morning was enough to trigger this.

Betty stares at her mom and thinks about how Archie stuck with her through the phone calls and impossible choices. She thinks about how, in the student lounge, he’ll look up at Veronica perched on the arm of his chair as she scrolls through her phone, watching her with a look that’s vaguely overwhelmed and almost hides his soft, admiring wonder. How seeing them together like that makes Betty feel warm and calm and happy.

Her mom is talking about people who don’t even exist anymore and maybe never did.

Her mom is never going to understand that.

From across the sunlit breakfast bar in this nice house on the good side of town that is the exact opposite of what her mom likes to pretend she never came from, Betty eats her omelette and listens to her mom rehash fears and resentments through her private collection of ghosts she can’t move past.

 

 

 

 

That evening, Betty lies to her mom that she’s going over to Veronica’s for a while. She heads to the center of town, by the cemetery, along the familiar route to Pop’s, past the railroad tracks and the soup kitchen and the Whyte Wyrm to the trailer park.

She walks up the metal stairs and knocks.

Jughead answers and stares at her in what looks like disbelief. All he can manage is, “Betty.”

 _Why am I always a surprise to you?_ she thinks. But instead she asks, “Can I come in?”

She manages to catch her habitual lean forward to give him a hello kiss and traps the urge in her closed fists without giving herself the relief of reopening her cuts.

He takes her coat and watches her circle the small living room he keeps so compulsively neat. Hot Dog lifts his head, thumps his tail a few times in greeting and goes back to sleeping in front of the TV.

Betty turns around and steps up to the crumbling edge that’s been collapsing under her for almost as long as they’ve been together. She asks, point-blank, “Do you want to be with me?”

Jughead flinches like she took a swing at him. “I do. Of course I do.”

“Why? _Why_ do you want to be with me?” Betty makes a gesture at the trailer that her mind expands out to encompass the entire Southside and the Serpents and his jacket and his bike and that dark, scary, rundown bar. “You don’t want me here. You don’t want me to know anything. You don’t actually want me in your life. _This is your life_.”

Jughead’s gaze darts to his jacket, _the_ jacket, hanging up on its hook. The snake is a startling green in the glow of the room’s lights. Betty waits for Jughead to say something, but he doesn’t, just looks back at her with that stark fear at the back of his eyes. She waits and waits.

“Why are we fighting for this?” She waves a hand between them. “Why am _I_ fighting for this?

“Why are you, Betty?” His voice is quiet. Jughead glances around the cramped trailer and she wonders if he’s seeing the same symbols and places that are never going to stop tearing at them, forces that don’t feel heartache or get weary, that you can’t grind down and kick all the hope out of. Distantly she hears Jughead say, “This can’t be what you want. You could do so much better—”

“Listen.” Her heart is racing. “I want to know _you_. That’s what I want. That’s what I’ve always wanted. If you can’t believe that by now, I don’t know how else to tell you.”

Jughead stares at her, silent and so tightly collapsed in on himself she can’t read anything at all.

 _All right_ , Betty thinks. _Okay._

Her coat is carefully folded over the back of a chair and, as Betty pulls it on, she finally lets herself think, _What if I can’t fix this?_

She grabs her purse with the numb, funhouse mirror sense of being removed from herself and gets all the way to the door.

Without turning back, she says, “So many people tell me what I should want. You weren’t supposed to be one of them. I thought you knew me better—”

Tears close up her throat. What does it matter now, what she thought?

She reaches out to open the door as the ground gives way under her feet. Her face is hot and wet. A lurch of nausea rolls through her and for a moment she’s afraid she’ll actually be sick. She needs to hold herself together to get out this door, down the steps where everything started ending so long ago and walk those nine and half blocks that turned out to be distance enough to tear them apart.

She needs to do something to blunt all these awful, coiling—

A hand lands on her shoulder. Jughead tugs, soft like a plea. As she turns, he’s already speaking.

“I get all—twisted up. I'm scared you’re going to figure out—” he makes a helpless gesture towards himself. “I’m not worth the trouble that follows me around, no matter what I do.” His touch slides down her arm and then back up and she can feel how badly he’s trembling. “You’ll figure that out, Betty, and you’ll take off. Just like—”

His hands cup her face, just long enough for his thumbs to wipe at the tears on her cheeks, before shifting back to her shoulders with that light, fluttery pressure. “I can’t be worth...” He shrugs one shoulder, back towards the small living room, which she’s seen filled with his dad’s dirty dishes and empties and an ice chest of beer. Which he’d cleaned up so carefully after the place was trashed by the cops searching for a planted gun.

She stares up at this boy, who listened to her and found Polly with her and told her she was strong enough to hold her family together even when holding on was so, so hard. Who told her he loved her despite the stark fear all over his face.

“Jughead Jones. I’ll keep on telling you. You have to believe me. I—”

The words are too small for everything that’s crammed inside her and running over her skin like pain or fear, but she’s lit up with a warm glow for all that this feeling hurts. Betty pulls him down and thinks, _I want you_ , and kisses him with her hand curved around the back of his neck and thinks, _Please, please believe me_. She pours her plea into the kiss, mixed up with all this love that she’s helpless to turn off. She gets his mouth open and both her hands are touching his skin. She wishes she could shove her belief and all this frustrated desire straight into his chest, wishes she could pin him down with the weight of how much she feels for him.

Getting to the couch is a blur of his mouth on her neck and pulling off his shirt and her shirt, tugging her skirt down her hips and kicking off shoes. She wants him naked. She wants his touch to be rough with so much desire that she knows he’s just as helpless in this as she is.

She kneels over his lap on the couch as her knees press into the cushions and her hands brace against his shoulders. Jughead stares up at her with wonder and an unsteady joy that makes her lean down to kiss him, deep and messy and as slow as she can stand.

She asks and figures out that neither of them has a condom, so she rubs up against his cock through her panties, even though she wants to tug that last scrap aside and sink onto him. But she has his hands and his mouth and can lean forward to push her breasts against his chest. He’s so hard for her and she’s making his skin flush. He looks so beautiful that—

“You drive me crazy,” she moans into his neck, rocking forward, into him. She bites the bare skin of his shoulder as she shakes apart with all this scary, phenomenal want.

Jughead’s big, gentle hands soothe from her hips to her waist as the shivering peak tears into her, curling her spine back and then collapsing her forward, and all she can hear is her heart pounding and his voice in her ear, repeating, “Shh. Betty. I got you. I got you.”

She’s hazy with the come down that makes her feel heavy and like she’s floating all at once.

Betty holds herself away just enough to give him some room to move. His cock slides over the damp space between her thighs and up against her stomach. She kisses his mouth and his face and when she says, “C’mon,” kisses his jaw and whispers, “I want you to. I love you. I want you—” He comes in streaked out lines against her skin as she slowly fucks her tongue into his mouth and tugs at fistfuls of his wild, messy hair and thinks _mine mine mine_.

He’s so sweet and dazed and can’t stop touching her. She never wants to forget the way he stares up at her, slumped back against the couch, his body in a loose satisfied sprawl. She wants to capture his raw, stripped-open look and keep the image trapped carefully between her hands forever and ever.

 _Oh_ , she thinks with a ridiculous giddy rush as his palms run over her hips and along the tops of her thighs. _There you are. Hi_.

She leans back in.

 

 

 

 

Later she texts Veronica to cover for her and calls her mom, pro forma, without caring whether she’s all that convincing. Betty puts her phone on silent and crawls into bed beside him, mostly naked.

Jughead tightens his arm around her waist and tucks his face into her neck. The words are muffled when he says, “Please don't stop. Just—keep on not giving up.”

When she promises, he leans up on an elbow to kiss her, so soft and open that her battered heart starts aching for no good reason. Jughead touches his forehead against hers when the kiss ends, then reaches back to flick off the last light.

He settles, their bodies tangled up like somehow they could blur the lines where she ends and he starts. She drifts off with the faint brush of Jughead’s mouth against her skin and that feeling follows her down into the eventual dark.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr at [@burberrycanary](http://clktr4ck.com/qcg8).


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